Something Strange Across the River (2 page)

I did not immediately answer. Instead I tended to the knot of my parcel, ensuring it was tight and proper, before standing and facing him. He was apparently unable to tolerate the silence and quickly grabbed my elbow, pushing me and growling, “Go over there.”

He led me down a small street in the park and out to the lip of Kototoi Bridge, where there was a small police box situated near the main street. He dragged me there before handing me roughly to the officer on duty and storming off, no doubt to fulfill his much more pressing duties.

The officer on duty did not leave his place at the entrance to the small building when he spoke to me. “Where did you come from at this time of night?”

“From just over there,” I answered.

“And where, exactly, is ‘over there’?”

“From over by the moat.”

“What moat?”

“There’s a river called Yamaya, it runs by Matsuchiyama.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tadasu Oe,” I answered, to which the policemen responded by flipping open a notepad. I quickly explained the spelling of my name.

He glared at me throughout my explanation as if to say “shut up,” and when he was finished noting my name he quickly unbuttoned my jacket and started turning it over in his hands.

“There’s nothing here,” he grunted, looking in the collar.

“What are you looking for?” I asked, leaning to show him the collar of my vest as well.

“What’s your address?”

“Otan, 1-6 Azabu.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Unemployed then. How old are you?”

“Year of the Rabbit in Yin.”

“I said, how old are you?”

“Year of the Rabbit, 1879,” I said with the intention of remaining silent, but I quickly worried over his reaction and, recanting, stated: “58.”

“Still young aren’t you?”

“Ahaha.”

“And what did you say your name was?”

“I believe I just told you. Tadasu Oe.”

“You have a family?”

“Three of us,” I answered. It was a lie, I had no family, but in my experience people trusted you more if you said you had one. I’d adopted a custom of answering the question with “three.”

“You say ‘three,’ so you have a wife and who else?” He asked, interpreting my answer in the nicest way he could have.

“Wife and Ma.”

“How old’s your wife?”

The question gave me pause for a moment, but I quickly remembered a woman I’d once had a relationship with and answered, “31. Born in 1906, July 14th. Year of the horse.”

Had he asked for her name I was ready to answer with the name of a character in the novel I was working on, but he said nothing. He patted down my overcoat and, finding a lump in the pocket asked, “What do you have in here?”

“A pipe and my glasses.”

“Fine. What about down here?”

“Can of food.”

“What about this? This a wallet? Why don’t you pull it out and give me a look at it.”

“There’s money in there.”

“How much?”

“Probably around 20 or 30 yen.”

He took out the wallet but did not open it. He set it on the small table used to hold the phone and continued,

“What’s that package you’ve got there? Come on in and show me what’s in it.”

I untied the towel and he looked inside. There were no problems with the clump of bread or the old magazine, but the policeman altered his demeanor the moment he saw the long, seductive singlet sleeve.

He snorted. “What the hell is this? You’re carrying some strange stuff, old man.”

“Oh, that, ahahaha…” I laughed.

“What are ya carrying this for? It’s awfully…
womanly
,” he sneered, pinching the singlet with revulsion between his fingers and holding it up to the light. He snapped his eyes back on me, and snorted, “Where’d you get this?”

“At a secondhand shop.”

“Why do you have it?”

“I bought it with the money from my wallet. Opened the wallet up and bought it.”

“And where was this?”

“By the large gate in Yoshiwara.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Three yen and seventy sen.”

He threw the singlet on the table and glared at me in silence. It seemed as though he was deciding whether or not to throw me in the pen with the other criminals, and in the face of such consideration the courage necessary for my previous lighthearted jesting quickly abandoned me. I watched him in silence, just as he watched me. His eyes moved down to my wallet, which he flipped open and started perusing. Inside he discovered a long-forgotten temporary certificate for fire insurance, a certificate from city hall for the registration of my seal, which of course was accompanied by the seal itself. He went through the papers one by one, unfolding them, flattening out the creases and laying them neatly on top of one another, proceeding to inspect my seal by the light. He peered, brow furrowed, at the relief of my name carved into the end. One could not accuse him of a lack of professional rigor. I passed the time by standing in the doorway and gazing out into the street.

The road split diagonally in two directions just in front of the police box; one led off towards South Senju, the other towards Shirahige Bridge. Before it split the road stretched out from the backside of Asakusa Park and crossed the major traffic artery that lead to Kototoi Bridge. Even at night the area was usually filled with a fairly constant traffic flow, though perhaps due to the odd and unsettling look of my doorway questioning, no pedestrians opted to linger within earshot. There was a shirt shop across the street, and the woman running it, shopboy at her side, was starting over in my direction, disinterested, as she closed up the shop.

“Hey, that’s enough, put all this stuff away already.”

“None of these things are really very important anyway,” I whispered as I collected my wallet and carefully retied the handkerchief around my things. “Do you need anything else?”

“No.”

“Have a nice night then,” I said, pulling out a gold-tipped Westminster cigarette and bringing a match to the tip. At the very least, the policeman deserved a good sniff of the scent, so before I turned and strode toward Kototoi Bridge, I turned back and exhaled a heavy lungful of smoke into the police box.

In hindsight, I am struck by the revelation that, had my seal and its certification not been tucked into my wallet, he most certainly would have thrown me into the pen. Good lord, secondhand clothes are unsettling things. That worn-out scrap of cloth was a curse.

Chapter Two

I have outlined a new idea for a novel I intend to call
Disappearance
. If I were to actually write it—and do afford me this small indulgence—I have a fair amount of confidence that it would not be intolerably terrible.

The protagonist will be called Junbei Taneda. He is a little over 50 years old, and is employed as an English teacher at a private middle school. At the start of the story it has been three or four years since Junbei lost his wife and became a widower. Soon he meets Mitsuko, whom he will remarry.

Mitsuko was employed at a certain famous politician’s estate, where she was the personal maid of the politician’s wife. However, she was deceived by the owner of the estate and became pregnant. The politician asked a butler who saw to his affairs, a certain Endo, to attend to the matter. If Mitsuko complied with the estate owner’s requests he promised to send her five yen every month, for the first 20 years of the child’s life, to secure the child’s wellbeing. In return Mitsuko was never to mention the child in connection to his name, and he was never to be declared the father or included in any official documentation. There was also talk, in the event that Mitsuko was to marry, of awarding the family an impressive dowry.

So Mitsuko left to stay with Endo, the butler, and gave birth to a baby boy. In the space of two months, through the mediation of Endo, she found herself married to Junbei, the middle school English teacher. At the time she was 19. Junbei was 30.

Since losing his first wife, Junbei had been living on a small salary and was unable to perceive hope around him. As middle age approached he became sluggish and exhausted, a shadow of a man, but after talking with his friend Endo, he was momentarily enticed and confused at the mention of Mitsuko’s money. Soon they were married.

Because the child had been born so recently, Mitsuko had yet to file the proper documentation. With consideration to their marriage, Endo arranged to have both Mitsuko and the child registered officially on Junbei’s family records. If one were to look into their records, it would have appeared as though they had been in a common-law marriage, and only decided to register with the state due to the birth of their son.

Two years went by, and Mitsuko gave birth to a daughter. Soon after, they had another son.

Their oldest son, who was not Junbei’s, soon reached the age where it was time for him to set out on his own, at which point a letter suddenly arrived from the politician. His monthly payments were to be cut off. It was not just that the agreed-upon timeframe had passed. In fact, the actual father had died of a terrible illness, and shortly after his wife followed him to the grave.

Their oldest daughter Hoko was raised much as second children often are—her allowance was raised ever higher by the year. Eventually Junbei was forced to take on two or three night jobs to cover their expenses.

The oldest son, while studying at a private college, became an athlete and soon went overseas. The oldest daughter Hoko, became active in theater circles and found herself a sort of star actress from nearly the moment she graduated from her girl’s school.

Mitsuko, who’d had a charming, rounded face at the time of their marriage, grew heavier with time, and the lines on her face stretched into the crevices and wrinkles of an old woman. She became deeply invested in a school of Buddhism, the Nichirenshu, and eventually became a member of their managing body.

Junbei spent his time teaching, and finding moments between his lessons to run back and forth to theaters and athletic fields to wish his children well and participate in the formal greeting of their superiors. The house was always in such an uproar of activity that even the mice were afraid to poke their noses from their holes at night.

Junbei had, ever since his childhood, a low tolerance for socializing and noise, and with age that tolerance was tried by the incessant hustle and bustle in his own home. He discovered an unaffected scorn for all of Mitsuko’s beloved things. He made a concerted effort to suffer his family, but his need for revenge found manifestation in the cold look he often gave his wife. There was no other way for a soft-spoken man like himself to behave.

Junbei quit his job in the spring of his 51st year. On the day of his retirement he did not go home. He disappeared and told no one where he was going.

One day, on the train, he randomly met a girl who had once worked at his home as a maid. Her name was Sumiko, and as it turned out she was employed at a cafe in Asakusa. Junbei went there a few times and got tipsy on beer.

After sometime had passed he received his retirement severance pay, which he quickly stashed in his pocket and made for Sumiko’s apartment, told her of his situation, and spent the night…

* * *

I am not sure how to end the story.

His family will put out a missing persons report. A detective will track him down and force an explanation out of him. These pleasures, pursued late in life, are often likened to rain just before twilight. I could make his end as miserable as I saw fit.

I have thought of many ways for Junbei to fall, and of the emotions that would accompany that fall. But I am still undecided as to the course he should take. I’ve thought about how it would feel for him to be handcuffed and taken away by the detective. I’ve thought about how it would feel for him to be given back over to his wife, the embarrassment and shame of it. How would it feel to be put in that situation?

When I bought the tattered singlet in the back alley of Sanya, I was taken in by the police and had my background thoroughly investigated. That experience will prove incredibly instructive in my effort to describe the state of Junbei’s mind.

When composing a novel I find the time when the characters make choices that will affect their lives and lead to the development of events to be the most interesting. Those moments of development and their descriptions are fascinating. Conversely, I have also fallen into the trap of placing to much weight and descriptions on the sets and the background when I should have been focusing on the characters and their personalities.

I developed Junbei’s story from a desire to depict Tokyo, and how its old lovely streets lost their individuality and beauty in the post-earthquake reconstruction. To that end Junbei will, no doubt, hide out in Honjo or Fukakawa or on the outskirts of Asakusa, or even hidden in an alleyway further to the east in those lands that had been farms until but a few years before.

Up until this point I have, on my occasional walks, intended to give a flavor of the life around Suna, Kamedo, Komatsugawa, and Terajima, but when it comes time for me to put down my brush, I feel as though my descriptions lack some effect. At one point (near the turn of the century), I composed a novel about the brothels of Fukagawa Asaki, and when I showed it to a friend of mine his reaction was, “You cannot hope to capture the feeling of the Asaki brothel towns without putting in something about the torrential rains of August and September. You know the tower of the very building you speak of has blown down once or twice in those incredible storms.” To precisely capture the background of the story, attention must be given to the seasons and the climate. The great Lafcadio Hearn did so elegantly in his
Chita
and
Youma
.

It was an evening in June. The season of heavy rains was not over yet, but the sky had been clear since morning. I finished my dinner while the shadows were still long across the street. Twilight showed no sign of descending. I put down my chopsticks and left the shop with plans to walk far out to Senju or Kameido or wherever my feet felt like taking me, and with that intention I caught a streetcar to Kaminarimon, which just so happened to arrive concurrently with a bus on its way Tamanoi, on the other side of the river.